Super Bowl Ads 2008

February 4, 2008

This morning, I realized that what I *didn’t* see in the Super Bowl ads was interesting – I didn’t see your stereotypical light beer commercial with bikini-clad women enticing men to buy watered down mass-produced beer in order to hypothetically have a shot with them. Overall, there just wasn’t much “buy stuff=get boobs” among the ads.

Sure, there was a Victoria’s Secret spot, but they can hardly help it – they’re advertising products specifically for boobs. Carlos Mencia tried to help men pick up women in a bar, but it was more about the men being ineffectual at that task than boob-splotation (although it did its exploitation in the “dumb foreigner”/ethnic stereotype realm). I think Dell’s ad suggested that buying a Dell might attract hot women, but that spot was barely memorable. NOW has a different take on the ads, calling the Planters ad with the “unattractive” woman offensive, and noting the Danica Patrick bit from GoDaddy, generally complaining of “gratuitous violence, sexual exploitation and ethnic caricatures.”

Seriously, though? For such a riled-up sporting event, the ads were much less sexist and offensive than one might expect. In fact, the most memorable ads were for etrade (baby investor), Coca-Cola (Frist and Carville), the one with the oboe, the Clydesdale-in-training (Anheuser-Busch), and the Audi Godfather spoof. These were funny, at least a little clever, and didn’t manage to imply that drinking cheap beer would make you attractive to those with running over cups. They were, in my opinion, the best of the night, and none of them relied on the old bikini/beer technique. You can view all of the ads at Spotbowl.